


Quantum

by EleanoraMcKogane



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Cuban Lance (Voltron), Eventual Keith/Lance (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), Gay Keith (Voltron), Homesick Lance (Voltron), Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Insecure Lance (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Angst, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Fluff, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, M/M, Minor Keith/Lance (Voltron), Oblivious Keith (Voltron), POV Keith (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 07:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20060170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EleanoraMcKogane/pseuds/EleanoraMcKogane
Summary: First published on Instagram (username: @/eleanoramckogane)





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> First published on Instagram (username: @/eleanoramckogane)

“Oh, hi Lance,” Keith says timidly as he entered the bridge, not entirely surprised to see him there but also not expecting him.

Lance doesn’t reply; he remains stoic, looking out at the vast space, arms crossed at his chest and a strange expression creasing his eyebrows. He looks troubled, a little angry perhaps and it makes Keith stop dead in his tracks. 

And with it, so does his heart.

“Lance?” he calls in a low murmur and Lance seems to shiver a little, just a brief shrug of his shoulders before he’s exhaling loudly. Keith tries again, taking only one step closer to him. “What’s wrong?”

“I thought you didn’t have time for this,” Lance replies bitterly and Keith freezes, taken aback by his harsh tone. 

Never had he ever heard him speak like that.

“What-“ but Keith catches himself as realisation dawns on him. 

Keith remembers catching the way Lance had glanced at him, hurt and stung at being easily brushed off when he returned after months of absence. 

His stomach drops to the floor while his heart gives a painful bear, his voice a raspy whisper of understanding. “Oh!”

“Oh!” Lance repeats, bitterness still coating his tone and sending unpleasant shivers down Keith’s spine.

Keith gives one tentative step forward and when Lance doesn’t move, just stares straight ahead at the never-ending parade of constellations that throb with light, he sits down next to him with a quiet and tired exhale. 

He looks out the window too, tries to find the words written in the stars but finding none. 

He glances back at Lance who senses his stare and hugs his legs tighter, hiding his face from view. 

Still Keith observes him; the way his brown hair is beginning to curl behind his ear, the strong jaw clenching as he swallows and body shivering as he breathes.

And Keith is hurting for hurting him.

“I…” he begins but doesn’t know how to end the sentence. 

So he closes his mouth and returns his eyes to space, hearing the pound of his own heart hammering inside the cage of his chest. 

The silence is tense, filled with such static it sizzles. Keith feels like it pinch his skin, raise the hairs on his arms and back of the neck and weigh down on him. He feels uncomfortable, desperate and hopeless for Lance to speak and unburden him. 

“Lance,” he tries, the name echoing around him like a plea. “Talk to me.”

Lance sniffs and turns his head just enough for Keith to catch the wetness in them. His frown deepens the wrinkles in his forehead, crinkles the corner of his eyes and hardens his face. 

Keith doesn’t like the look he witnesses there and longs to erase it.

“What do you wanna talk about?” Lance asks sourly. “How you just disappeared without a word? How Kolivan just dropped on us that you were missing in action? How you just return like that as if nothing had happened?”

“Lan-“

“You know what?” Lance cuts him, finally turning to face him and Keith swallows, almost choking on the lump that had begun forming on his throat. 

Lance’s face showed an emotion Keith isn’t used to seeing; disappointment. 

It crushes every last piece of Keith’s already broken heart. 

“I don’t have this time for this.”

And he’s standing up, walking pass Keith and leaving behind a distraught Keith who is too late to wake up to the harsh reality. 

"No, wait! Lance.” 

But Lance is already gone with the metallic low swoosh of the door and an empty bridge that echoes the misery inside Keith. 

He lets it fall alongside the pain in his knuckles after punching the door, the pain a welcoming gift to numb the anguish that threatens to destroy him.


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First published on Instagram (username: @/eleanoramckogane)

Keith is restless and alert. The darkness in his room feels heavy and dense all around him, closing him on his troubled mind like a reckless prison. It’s suffocating him, the claustrophobia thickening his breath and making him sweat in agitation. 

His mind reels with thoughts of Lance, the disappointment he witnessed in his blue eyes and the bitterness of his tone a waking nightmare that haunts him. It opens a chasm inside his chest, opens a hole in the pit of his stomach that makes him feel sick, hopeless. 

There’s a light knock on his door and the darkness within his room seems to stir. Keith gingerly stands from the bed, limbs wobbly and body drained. 

He doesn’t even reach the panel when the door opens, the weak light from the hallway penetrating the dimness within and blinding Keith momentarily. 

But his chest constricts at the silhouette standing there by the door. 

“Lance?” he calls and Lance lifts his head to him, takes a hand from his pocket and rubs the back of his neck. He looks lost, as if he’s wondering why he’s there. “What are you doing here?”

Lance takes a quick glance at the room before dropping his hand and exhaling. “Can I come in?”

Keith steps aside to allow Lance in, the way he looks so troubled making him apprehensive. Lance enters the room, the door sliding shut with that same metallic swish that grits Keith’s teeth a little. 

He turns the bluish lamps on to perish the darkness, their soft glow surrounding Lance like a halo of light. He just stands there in the middle of the room, backs to Keith and hands now dropped at his side, closed into loose fists and head hanging low.

"What is it?” Keith asks crossing his arms to prevent his heart from hammering against his ribcage. He’s glad his voice came out normal when his throat feels clogged.

“Did you know that my niece also likes hippos?” Lance starts; his voice is a mere whisper that carries through the dim room in palpable waves of melancholy. Keith swallows around the lump in his throat and waits. “She says it’s her favourite animal so I gave her a tiny one I won on a fun fair. She was two and she happily proclaimed me as her favourite uncle.”

Keith smiles softly at that, Lance’s adoration for his niece clear in the way he spoke about her. Still, he doesn’t turn but takes a deep breath and raises his head.

“I miss her,” he confesses and Keith can hear the homesickness in his words, the pain in the way he sounds breathy. “I miss my family, I miss Cuba, Earth… I miss _home_.”

Keith feels the sudden urge to step forward and take Lance’s pain away from him. But he doesn’t know how, doesn’t know what to say. So he just listens, let’s Lance pour out his aching burden onto him and bears it on his shoulders. If it means alleviating Lance of his own misery even if for a minute, Keith would gladly burn the sun. 

Lance moves then only to collapse on Keith’s bed with a weary exhale, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Keith’s heart flips in his chest. “For what?”

“For what I said earlier,” he replies placing his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. He doesn’t look at Keith, haven’t even made eye contact with him. He just furrows his brow and purses his lips, an aggrieved expression replacing his always so lively spirit. “I didn’t mean it. I was just… _hurt_.”

Keith expels the shaky air from his lungs and approaches the bed, slowly sitting down next to Lance who fidgets with his fingers. He wants to hold those hands so badly, wants to stop their shaking by kissing those knuckles. 

“How did you know about the hippos?” Keith asks and Lance snickers, the corner of his lips tugging upward. It lessens Keith’s clenched chest a portion.

“Shiro let it slip,” Lance replies chuckling lightly. “He swore he’d had us cleaning the garbage chute if we ever told you.”

“You better start working then ‘cause I’m gonna kill him for telling you that.”

Lance laughs; such a hearty and open laugh that melts Keith’s apprehensions and flutters his heart, heating up his cheeks in a rosy kiss.

“I spent two years on a space whale with my mother and a cosmic wolf,” Keith states and he can hear Lance’s sharp intake of breath as he snaps his head around to face him. Keith just stares straight ahead, focused on those long memories. “For you I was gone for just a few months but for me… it felt like a lifetime.”

“Keith, I... I didn’t know,” Lance says and Keith can hear the bewilderment in his tone, feel the shock in his presence. “Two years? That’s why you’re so…”

“Bigger, cooler and grizzled?” Keith asks bumping into Lance playfully. He glances at him and sees a small blush dotting his cheeks and it does funny things to his insides.

“I never called you that,” Lance dismisses it with a wave of his hand but the smile is already there, planted on the corner of his lips and dissipating the troubled paleness he first had when he came into Keith’s room. “I was talking about your older brother.”

They laugh together, a deed that had never occurred between in such a relieved environment, something that Keith had longed for. 

“Was it really two years to you?” Lance asks seriously, brow creased in a different manifestation. 

“Yeah!” Keith puffs out, the weight of his past a little less heavy now that he had shared it.

The silence that falls between them is comfortable.

There’s no need to fill it with meaningless chattering, to speak just for the sake of speaking. To Keith, having Lance near is enough to eclipse the numbness he felt in those two years of only dreaming about him. With him sitting by his side he could pretend that those visions he saw, the ones he clung to dearly, could become a reality. 

He was good at pretending.

“Hey Keith,” Lance calls breaking the silence.

“Hum?”

"I missed you,” he says and his words envelop Keith in a mess of erratic emotions he can’t control from rushing through his entire body. His heart skips a beat pumping hot blood through his veins, his limbs seem weightless and his head repeats the words over and over again until it becomes a hymn. 

“I missed you too,” Keith manages to say, forcing his voice to remain calm while his senses go crazy. Lance smiles at him and oxygen is hard to find. 

Then there’s a pain in his arm that brings back the air he was missing. “Ouch!”

“That’s for brushing me off,” Lance says seriously.

“Alright, I’m sorry,” Keith gives in, rolling his eyes as Lance gives him a pointed look. “I didn’t mean it. I was just focused on the mission and getting Lotor.”

“Never ignore me again,” Lance gives him another punch in the arm, a light one this time and there’s something in his voice that has Keith’s chest contracting in that heavy way he always detested.

He finds Lance’s gaze, the blue in his eyes so deep and stormy like the ocean, and holds it firmly. 

"I won’t.”


End file.
